Commentary by Alfred Webb:

Thomas Dermody, a poet, was born in Ennis, 17th January 1775. Although his memoirs have been written at considerable length, and his poems were in his time much esteemed, the former contain little of real interest, and the latter are now quite forgotten. Endowed with fine natural abilities, he was befriended by the amiable Countess of Moira, and by other persons of refinement and position, but nothing could wean him from dissolute and irregular habits, and he died in poverty, alone, in a wretched hovel near Sydenham, England, 15th July 1802, aged 27. His poems were published in 1807 under the title of the Harp of Erin.